Richard Recchia (1885-1983) American, Ceramic Cat Sculpture Replica. 

Depicts a fat Persian cat. Replica of Museum of Fine Art Boston. 

Size: 10 x 11 x 19 in. 

#2433 . 

Richard Henry Recchia was born in Quincy, Massachusetts on November 20, 1885, originally named Ricardo. His parents were Italian immigrants, and his father was a marble carver who encouraged him early on. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1904 to 1907, then served as assistant to Bela Pratt and Daniel Chester French until 1917. His first major commission was a set of allegorical panels representing architecture for the exterior of the Museum. In 1915, he won medals for several works exhibited at San Francisco’s Panama-Pacific Exposition. This led to an invitation for him to live and work in Paris that same year, where he met and married Ana Diaz, a Chilean woman. They had two children before Diaz died of tuberculosis in 1926. Recchia then moved to Rockport, Massachusetts and married his second wife, the watercolor artist Mary Cartherine Parsons. Recchia was a founder of the Boston Society of Sculptors, a charter member of the Guild of Boston Artists, and a member of the National Sculpture Society and Rockport Art Association. He won the Elizabeth N. Watrous Gold Medal for Sculpture in 1944. During the same year, he sculpted the Inspiration and Aspiration medal for the Society of Medalists. He outlived his second wife and both his children, dying in Rockport on August 17, 1983, and is buried under his self-sculpted tombstone at the Beech Grove Cemetery.

Scratches throughout.